Celeste Ng - Little Fires Everywhere

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well done, but not brilliant

I would have expected to enjoy Little Fires Everywhere more than I actually did.  It's well written, the characters are realistically drawn and there's a decent story here, but something just didn’t quite chime with me as it should.

The story itself is a little complex, but this is a book about unaware privilege assuming that its vision of a good life is the only correct one and trying to mould and control everything in the world to conform to that vision, and also about mother-daughter relationships.  In brief, an impoverished, artistic, nomadic single mother, Mia, and her daughter Pearl arrive in a comfortable, privileged suburb of Cleveland in 1998 and their lives become entangled with the Richardsons, a long-established, wealthy family there.  The friendships and conflicts which ensue throw light on class in the USA and on what a fulfilled life may mean.

Celeste Ng writes very well.  Her prose is elegant and very readable, and her characters, especially Mia and Mrs. Richardson, are well drawn and convincing, but I found the book as a whole a little unsatisfactory.  I can't quite put my finger on exactly why, but I think it is a combination of small factors: the ground Ng covers is pretty well trodden and I'm not sure that I found any major new insights here, there are some long, rather plodding backstories which dragged somewhat, there is at least one colossal coincidence too many for me, I think Ng tries to do rather too much and to present too many points of view for the story to retain sufficient focus, aspects of the ending didn't ring true to me…and so on.  There were quite a lot of things like this "…their beautiful ordered city, where everyone followed the rules and everything had to be beautiful and perfect on the outside, no matter what mess lay within," which were a pleasure to read, but made points which were very, very familiar.

That said, I found it easy to read, and there are some very nice character insights and one or two quite touching moments.  This, and the quality of the prose means that I've rounded 3.5-stars up to 4, but although others have found this brilliant, I can only give it a qualified recommendation.